Here I am again, after a four-year-long parenthesis I woke up thinking about doing what I want to do, in some ways that are different from my routine. I am just at the edge of a new stage in my life. The world is what it is at this moment, and to be honest I am not pleased, but I need to revisit some old loves as a way to squeeze every single moment of life. So I am back to my photo-blog, the only survivor of my relationship with the Internet. I deleted my accounts on Facebook, Instagram and the late Twitter (the day after it died for a hideous X). I shut down my Spanish blog “ExtempForáneo” and my photo portfolio…
So I woke up and thought of my old mechanical camera, the fact that this year is its 45th anniversary. 45 years ago, I lived in Venezuela and one of my best friends from Argentina sold me his 35mm new camera for some reason I can’t remember. The Soviet maker, Zenit, released this camera to celebrate the Moscow Olympics of that year, 1980.
45 years later, I took my Zenit EM with its original Helios 44M lens and two other lenses, loaded with an Ilford HP5 Plus 400 film that expired in 2016 (that I kept in the freezer) – my favorite – and headed to my lovely Central Park to take photos.
Do you notice what I notice? I haven’t found that specific texture successfully emulated elsewhere, that magical vision that black and white film conveys. Digital grain until now has not been capable to capture that finishing, perhaps the soul of film photography.
So here I am back again with these pieces of magic film photography from an ordinary morning in a late-autumn day on Central Park between 93rd – 96th Streets.
They are simple pictures, nothing special other than the black and white texture, captured with my old 45 year-old camera. (Click on photos to enlarge them)
Last Round in Sight 